


forever younger, growing older just the same

by daydoodles



Category: Original Work
Genre: (not addressed but it's there), Bad Flirting, Blood, Blood Drinking, Borderline Personality Disorder, Coming Out, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Morally Grey Doctors, No Dysphoria, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Pre-Relationship, Scars, Self-Harm, Snarky boys, Trans Male Character, Vampires, awkward attempts at comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 07:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10509114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daydoodles/pseuds/daydoodles
Summary: Liam smells the blood long before he figures out where it’s coming from.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is a piece I wrote for a creative writing contest at my local library, and I didn't have anywhere else to put it so here it is. I suck at titles as always, so this one came from a [Panic! at the Disco song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooEv1cH97HA).
> 
> Special thanks and all my love goes out to: [Perrie](http://wesnenski.tumblr.com), [Mina](http://seguins.tumblr.com), [Erica](http://discardedmatter.tumblr.com), [Heater](http://doitfortheboys.tumblr.com), [Nana](http://gayghosting.tumblr.com), [Leah](http://sunflowerstark.tumblr.com), [Tati](http://immarcesibility.tumblr.com), and all the sweet anons I got while I yelled about this on my blog. I literally would not have gotten this finished without all of y'all.

Liam smells the blood long before he figures out where it’s coming from.

  
It isn’t even like he’s particularly good at this whole hunting thing; he has no reason to be. But in the end, instincts will win out every time, and Liam doesn’t have the fortitude to walk away from the sharp scent of fresh blood. It only takes a few blocks worth of wandering before he locates the source of the smell.

  
It’s a boy, probably about the same age as Liam. From where he’s standing, Liam can see the soft curve of his jaw as it clenches in time with the knife he’s dragging down his arm, leaving a trail of red in its wake, dripping down into a sticky puddle on the pavement. The smell gets stronger the closer he steps, and it’s slowly driving Liam mad; he hasn’t been this close to fresh blood in literal years. He has to resist the urge to just pounce on the guy, and takes a sip from the blood bag in his hand instead. It makes a loud slurping noise, which startles the boy into turning around abruptly, the blade of the knife slicing across his wrist jaggedly.

 

“What the fuck do you want?” the boy spits, and Liam finally steps into the light.

 

Their eyes meet, and Liam can pinpoint the exact moment the guy gets a good look at him, because everyone reacts the same way the first time they see him. Liam shrugs. The metallic scent of blood is clouding his judgment - were he a rational person, he’d ask what the boy is doing crouched on the asphalt with a knife to his wrist. In this state, though, he isn’t quite rational. Nor, technically, a person.

  
“I want your blood,” he says instead. “I’m not gonna take it, though, don’t worry. I, uh. Got my own already.” He lifts the blood bag in an attempt at reassurance, not that he’s ever been good at that.

  
The dude just stares at him, perfectly arched brows knitting together as deep brown eyes search his face for...something. “Is that a straw?” is not what Liam was expecting to be the next words out of his mouth.

  
He looks down at the bag. “Yeah. How else am I gonna drink it? It looks weird if I bring a cup to the hospital.”

  
“You stole that from the hospital?” The guy’s mouth actually drops, like that’s the part that bothers him. Not the fact that Liam is drinking blood right in front of his face.

  
“I didn’t steal it, but I feel like maybe we should address the fact that you’re slicing yourself up with a kitchen knife, not my dietary restrictions.” Liam cuts a look at the guy’s arms, which are still bleeding steadily, the bright red of his blood stark against his tan skin.

“Uh. You can’t have any of my blood, dude.”

  
Liam rolls his eyes and moves closer. “I already said I didn’t want it. Well, I mean, I do, but I said I wouldn’t drink it. Just let me see it.” He sticks the blood bag in his mouth, holding it by the straw, and holds his hands out, palms up.

  
The boy eyes him warily for a minute, like he’s weighing his options. Liam knows what he looks like, knows he’s unsettling at best and terrifying at worst, and he wouldn’t blame the dude for just getting the fuck out of dodge, but he doesn’t move. Liam figures his sense of self-preservation is probably long gone, though, judging by the slow drip of red still sticky in his self-inflicted wounds. Neither of them budge, for what feels like hours, but then the guy takes a step forward. He holds his arms out, just like Liam is.

  
“I”m gonna take the knife now, don’t freak out,” he says before gently wrapping a hand around the boy’s wrist. He flinches a little at the cold touch, but for the most part he doesn’t react. Liam notices, absentmindedly, how much darker the boy’s skin is than his; which isn’t saying much, really, but the contrast is weirdly beautiful, and he doesn’t miss the irony that he isn’t the one covered in blood.

  
He takes the knife, tosses it aside unceremoniously, and drags the boy closer to get a better look at the damage he’s done. The cuts aren’t deep, thankfully, and some of them are already starting to scab over. He knows they need to be cleaned regardless, and after looking the boy up and down he deems a trip to the hospital necessary.

  
“Listen,” he starts, dropping the boy’s limp arms, “I know you don’t wanna hear this, but you need to get that shit cleaned out. I know somebody at St. John’s if you want to go see her.” The guy just nods reluctantly, and Liam starts walking back in the direction he came from. “By the way, I’m Liam. Liam Tyrrell.”

  
“Samuel Borrego,” the guy says and offers a slight nod.

  
Liam offers up his most charming smile. “Nice to meet you, Samuel. Can I call you Sam?”

 

“No.” Samuel smirks. “And you’re saying it wrong.”

  
Liam’s smile falters, but doesn’t leave his face. “I have a white people accent, sorry man.” Samuel just laughs, which Liam takes as a good sign.

  
“So. Why are you...like this?” Samuel gestures vaguely to all of Liam, but he gets it. There’s a lot going on.

  
“Like what?” he asks anyway, just to be ornery.

  
“I don’t know, man, albino? Like, I get you’re pale, and blond as hell, but who the fuck has red eyes?” He really does look confused, and Liam can’t hold back a giggle.

  
“You do realise I’ve been drinking blood literally this entire time, right?”

  
“Vampires aren’t real.”

  
Liam laughs again. “You’re in denial.”

  
“I am not. At least tell me what happened.”

  
“For the record, I think I deserve more of an explanation than you do, given the circumstances; and anyway, I don’t remember, not really. The last thing I remember is finding out Kurt Cobain died.”

  
Samuel stops in his tracks, turning to face him. “You’ve only been a vampire since the 90’s?”

  
Liam stops too, cutting him a look. “Well, according to you vampires aren’t a thing, but yeah.”

  
“That’s lame as fuck.”

“At least I was alive in the 90’s. What are you, like twelve?”

“I’m 19, you dick.”

  
“Well, same. Except I’ve been 19 for twenty years.” He starts walking again, and Samuel follows suit.

  
“That sucks.”

  
“....Yeah, it really does.”

  
The fluorescent hospital lights flicker as they enter the lobby, sending Samuel’s face into harsh relief. He looks like he’s having second thoughts, but like hell is Liam letting him back out now. He pulls out his cell phone, hits speed dial number one, and gets an answer on the second ring. There’s not much to say, other than “I found a guy cutting himself and he needs actual medical attention that I am literally the least qualified person to give,” which is convincing enough.

  
“Who is that?” Samuel whispers as a middle-aged woman walks into the lobby, heels clicking against the linoleum.

  
“My sister.”

  
She walks up, looks Samuel up and down, clearly unimpressed, and sticks a hand out. “I’m Amber, Liam’s little sister. Also a doctor here.”

  
Samuel takes her hand and shakes it carefully so he doesn’t get blood all over. “Samuel. Liam’s...friend.”

  
She looks at him skeptically as she tucks a bit of her hair behind her ear. It’s greying now, but once upon a time it was the same white blonde as Liam’s. “Right. Well, come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

  
The actual cleaning isn’t bad, since the bleeding has mostly stopped by now; it’s mainly sterilization and wrapping Samuel’s arms so they don’t get infected or open back up randomly. Amber is nothing if not thorough, so at least he’s in good hands. She tells Samuel to wash the blood off his hands, as she does the same, and calls Liam over. He knows what she’s going to say before she even opens her mouth.

  
“Does he know?” is a loaded question for anyone, and can mean a lot of things, even for Liam. But when Amber asks it, he just nods. “You told him? We talked about this, Li.” She looks sad, or maybe tired. Twelve hour shifts at a hospital will do that to you; but then again so will having a vampire for a brother.

  
“No, I’m not an idiot.” Amber smirks at him. “Okay, I’m an idiot, but not that much of an idiot. He saw me drinking the blood you gave me, though.”

  
“You’re totally, 100% an idiot. Why were you drinking it on the way home?” She pinches the bridge of her nose, because they’ve talked about this, too. Liam’s the reason for at least half of her wrinkles, she’ll swear by it.

  
“I was thirsty.”

  
“Waiting fifteen minutes wouldn’t have killed you.”

  
“Well, no, I’m already dead.”

  
Amber rolls her eyes. “Don’t be an ass.”

  
“What did he say now?” Samuel cuts in, drying off his hands. He looks a lot better now that he’s cleaned up and distracted from whatever drove him to hurt himself in the first place.

  
“Doesn’t matter,” Amber says, thankfully. “Y’all need to get going before you get me in trouble. Be careful out there, yeah?” She leads them to the door and kisses Liam on the head, then gives Samuel a brisk hug. “I love you, Li, but I don’t want to see you back here for at least a week.”

  
“Don’t worry, I don’t wanna see you either,” he quips, and leaves before she can smack him.

  
Then they’re standing out in the muggy air again, and Samuel’s shuffling his feet like he isn’t sure what to do in this situation. Liam doesn’t think anyone would actually know what to do in this situation, probably, so he just offers to walk Samuel home because it seems like the polite thing to do. And Samuel agrees, because no rational person would argue with a vampire.

  
The only problem with that is that just walking side by side is awkward, and Liam knows he should probably address whatever’s up with Samuel that led them to this point to begin with, but there really isn’t a polite way to ask, “Why the fuck were you trying to murder yourself in the middle of the street?” Now that he thinks about it, there isn’t really a good way to answer that question, either, so Liam asks something else.

  
“Do you actually wanna die?”

  
Samuel looks at him for a split second, then he’s staring off into space like he hadn’t seriously thought about it till just that moment. And maybe he hadn’t; sometimes the idea of something sounds a lot better when you don’t give it too much thought. “Yeah, I do.”

  
“You know,” Liam says as he empties the blood bag in one slurp, “being dead isn’t as great as it sounds.”

  
“How so?”

  
“I can’t even legally drink, and I’m 42. And people still think I’m immature, but I could be having a mid-life crisis right now.” He stuffs the empty blood bag into the pocket of his jeans, because he learned his lesson the first time he got caught throwing one away in a public trash can.

  
“You can’t have a mid-life crisis if you aren’t alive.”

  
Liam blatantly ignores that comment. “There are some pros to being dead, though. My dad went bald when he was only thirty, but I won’t ever have that problem.”

  
Samuel snorts out a laugh, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like it would matter, nobody can see your white ass hair anyway.”

  
“Dye won’t stay in my hair, asshole. Let me live.”

  
“You’re dead.”

  
“Are you actually trying to fight me? Let me _exist_.”

 

“I don’t want to fight you, dude.”

 

Liam shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye. “Just because I’m a vampire doesn’t mean I’m any good at fighting, y’know.”

  
“Noted, not like it matters. I’ve never been in a fight in my life so I’m probably shit at it, too.”

  
“I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem like the type to internalise your negative emotions.”

  
“Nah, you’re right. It’s sort of a problem.”

  
Liam tries to look supportive, but he doesn’t really know what supportive looks like. “Do you wanna, like, talk about it?”

  
“Uh. Not really? Last time I tried to talk about it, it didn’t exactly go well.”

  
Liam cocks his head involuntarily. “Why not?”

  
“I don’t know, my ex was sort of a dick all around.” He shrugs a shoulder, eyes darting off to the side.

  
“Well, I’m not a dick.”

  
“You kind of are, though.”

  
Liam bumps his hip against Samuel’s, sending him tripping over his own feet. “First of all, bitch, I am a delight to be around. Secondly, I won’t judge you for whatever it is. Maybe you just need an outside perspective.”

  
Samuel sighs, resigning himself to his fate. “Well. A couple days ago, I sort of caught my boyfriend cheating on me, yeah? So we had a big fight, and he told me I was overreacting when I said that what he did wasn’t okay, because his previous boyfriend was fine with him sleeping around, but I had told him so many times that it made me uncomfortable. Anyway, he got pissed, and I broke up with him, and he didn’t even give a shit. He just left and went right back to Brant like nothing had even happened. And it’s not like I have the best self esteem to begin with, so it took a lot out of me, I guess. Plus, my parents don’t even know I like dudes, so I couldn’t talk to them about it.” He shrugs, probably trying to gauge Liam’s reaction to the fact he just came out in some random alleyway in the middle of the night, after knowing him for all of an hour. “And don’t worry, I’m not trying to hit on you or anything, but not many people know so I kind of...needed to get it out in the open.”

  
Liam slows his pace so he can look more closely at Samuel’s face. He looks scared shitless. “Hey, it’s cool. I, uhm, know how that is. I mean - not the _cheating_ boyfriend, but the boyfriend part, yeah.”

  
Samuel stares at him, and for what feels like a lifetime they just stand there and blink at each other. Liam can’t help but notice the way Samuel’s dark curls fall over his left eye when the breeze rustles his hair, and he lifts his hand to sweep it back out of his face, and it’s weirdly intoxicating to watch. Liam is almost tempted to brush it out of the way for him, but that’s a bad idea for a lot of reasons that he’d rather not dwell on, so he doesn’t.

  
“Do you want me to drink his blood?” he asks instead. It makes Samuel smile, which is all he wanted, so he considers it a win.

  
“Wouldn’t he be a vampire too if you did? Then we’d just be stuck with him forever.” Samuel makes a face like that is literally a fate worse than death. Which, in his mind, it probably is, if tonight is anything to go by.

  
“Well, you wouldn’t be. Only one of us is immortal here. And for the record, you only turn into a vampire if not all the blood is drained from your system. It’s avoidable.” He makes finger guns at Samuel out of reflex.

 

“Are you offering to murder my dickbag ex-boyfriend for me?”

 

“When you put it like that, it sounds bad.”

  
“It _is_ bad,” he says incredulously.

  
“So is cheating on your boyfriend.”

  
“Still doesn’t constitute murder.”

  
Liam rolls his eyes, like he’s being inconvenienced by the very existence of Samuel’s ex. “Fine, you win. Dickbag lives to cheat another day.”

  
“Not on me, he doesn’t.” Samuel smiles, and it dawns on Liam that this is probably the first time he’s gotten anything even vaguely resembling closure for the whole ordeal. And damn, if Samuel was beautiful when he was crushed and bleeding and broken, he’s absolutely radiant when he smiles. It’s contagious, and Liam can’t help the grin that spreads across his face.

  
He doesn’t want to force Samuel to talk, so they walk in silence the rest of the way to his house. It’s a quiet night, for the city, and they can’t see any stars, but there are planes overhead so it’s easy enough to pretend. Liam tips his head back, takes it all in; and it’s crazy to think that so many people are going about their lives like nothing is out of the ordinary, while he’s walking through the streets after midnight with a boy he just met, to a place he’s never been, sharing secrets he hasn’t been trusted with before. Maybe he should tell a secret or two of his own.

  
But then they reach Samuel’s house, and he’s climbing the balcony to his second story bedroom, and he asks Liam if he wants to come up. “Vampires don’t sleep anyway, right?” is hard logic to argue with, even if Liam would’ve wanted to. So they sit there, on wood that’s still damp from the rain they’ve been getting so much of lately, and watch the moon cross the sky because they don’t have anywhere to be. It’s a good feeling. Liam wonders if Samuel feels it, too. He asks as much, and Samuel tilts his head down to look at Liam. As he shifts their thighs brush, but neither one of them bother to move away.

  
“Yeah, I do.”

  
“You mean that, or are you just trying to get me to shut up again?”

  
“I don’t think anyone could get you to shut up,” he says, and Liam punches him lightly on the arm. Samuel makes a dramatic show of being seriously injured by “your freakish vampire strength,” but then he just slings an arm across Liam’s shoulders and shoots him a crooked grin. “But no, really, you helped more than you know, I think. I used to cut a lot, because I didn’t know how else to cope, but I hadn’t in a long time. It didn’t help as much as I remembered. Talking was better; let it out a different way, y’know?”

  
“You used to cut a lot?” Liam frowns, cocks an eyebrow.

  
“When I was younger, yeah. Like, middle school? Used to cut all the time. I still have the scars.” Samuel lifts up his shirt, exposing rows of jagged white lines zigzagging across his ribcage. Liam reaches a hand out, runs it over the ridges, and lets out a sigh.

  
“The thing about scars is, they’re meant to heal. You aren’t supposed to keep opening up old wounds.”

  
“What does a vampire know about scars?”

  
And, well, at first glance, it looks like Samuel’s right. Liam doesn’t have the stereotypical bite marks on his neck, or any signs of a struggle to preserve his humanity, or even a scratch to hint that he had any humanity to begin with. He’s all smooth lines and soft edges, flawless to the naked eye, unless you know where to look.

  
He eyes Samuel, sizing him up, and figures in the end, he doesn’t have much to lose. So he takes a deep breath, and raises the hem of his shirt enough to show Samuel the crescent moon scars stretching across the bottom of his chest. Samuel’s eyes dart up to meet his, a silent question, and Liam gives him a little nod. Samuel presses the palm of his hand against Liam’s sternum, and there’s no heartbeat to feel, but the gesture is sweet anyway, and then grazes the tips of his fingers across the blue marks, the battle scars Liam earned from his war with himself.

  
“You’re beautiful,” is not the reaction he expects to get, but it’s the first words out of Samuel’s mouth as he runs the palm of his hand across the plane of Liam’s chest. Liam’s glad he doesn’t actually need to breathe, because he’d be holding his breath either way; he’s afraid if he so much as blinks, the moment will shatter. But it doesn’t, and Samuel meets his eyes but his palm stays on the center of Liam’s chest where his heart should be, and it grounds him. Maybe it’s grounding Samuel, too.

  
“Not as beautiful as you.” Liam doesn’t mean to say it, but the moment it passes his lips he realises it’s true. He means it.

  
There are a thousand reasons he should go right then, leave Samuel alone on his balcony to wonder if the whole night was just a dream, continue his monotonous existence like he always has, try his best to forget about the beautiful boy with the heart of gold and the scars to prove it. But there are also a million reasons to stay, and even if Liam will never be able to have a normal life, or any life at all, he owes it to himself to take happiness where he finds it. So he does. He takes Samuel’s hand from its spot on his chest, and immediately misses the warm press of skin against his; but it’s okay, because then Samuel is tangling his fingers with his, and laying his head on Liam’s shoulder, and closing his eyes because he feels okay. Not completely whole, not yet, but he’s working on it. And they can keep working on it, together.

 

They have all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first original work I've ever shared with anyone, so any feedback is greatly appreciated!! And if you even took the time to read this, thank you. x


End file.
